Despite the fact that this power supply is not one of the first on the market to feature modular connections, I was still quite impressed with the product. E-Power has been in business since 1990 and has a practice of naming their PSUs after large cats. I was lucky enough to tackle the Tiger 530W (EP-530P5-T1) PSU.

Specs

Here are the PSU specs:

Notice that the two +12V ratings is a dead giveaway that this is a dual rail PSU. More and more manufacturers are moving to multiple rails for increased safety and voltage stability.

Here is the official flyer for the Tiger from E-Power:

Package & PSU

Other than the typo on the front, the graphics on the box are nice and clean, showing as well as listing the contents of the box.

Upon opening the box, I found an attractive, highly polished PSU with all of the cables pre-attached to the unit, a zip lock bag containing (4) 6” black wire ties, 5 additional case screws, and a 110V power cord, as well as a simple and easy to read instruction pamphlet.

The cables that were sent with the unit were the patented 20+4 pin main ATX cable, dual 4 pin 12V power cables, 2 shielded PCI Express cables, 2 SATA cables, 2 Dual Molex cables, 1 Dual Molex with a 4 pin FDD plug, and a Case Fan cable.

Now it may just be the fact that I am running an older rig, but I found that having only one FDD plug cable a bit odd. The instructions list three optional cables that you can purchase in addition to those shipped with the PSU, but the FDD cable was not one of them. Thankfully, I had a splitter from some of my earlier purchases, so I was able to power both my floppy drive and my ATI 9500 Pro.

The following picture shows the 20 pin ATX cable with a detachable 4 pin side cable for use on 24 pin boards.

The instruction sheet suggests sliding the 4 pin cable out and tying it up when only using a 20 pin board, but as the cable slide out from both ends, there is no point in having an additional cable when you don't need it… and isn't that why you would by a PSU with modular connectors?

After removing all of the cables, I proceeded to void the warranty.

The pre-production product flier sent by the company lists the fan as a 120mm Blue LED cooling fan, but the sample sent was a clear fan without the LEDs. After mentioning this to a representative from ePower, he stated that the LED option was eliminated to save costs.

If you choose to void your warranty, it appears that the cooling fan is your standard 120mm fan, so it would be easily replaced with something more to your liking.

The “business end” of the capacitors are facing towards the case, which has an insulating sheet of plastic to prevent shorting, but don't play with PSU caps if you can avoid it… and I recommend avoiding it.